- The much anticipated Q2 cryptocurrency report by CoinGecko is out.
- In general, the total market cap performed dismally compared to Q1, rising by 0.14%.
- Bitcoin was the best performer, outperforming the total crypto market cap at 6.9%.
- BTC prices trended upwards throughout Q2.
The highly anticipated Q2 cryptocurrency industry report is out. Unlike Q1 which had a lot of activity, Q2
was mostly in consolidation hence the market rose by a tiny fraction to reach $1.24 trillion at the end of
June.
BTC ended Q2 with a 6.9 % gain
Bitcoin outperformed the broader market during Q2, 2023 with a gain of 6.9%. This was very impressive
compared to the overall market cap for cryptocurrencies, which only saw a rise of 0.14% in the same
period. Bitcoin’s value rose from $28,517 to $30,481, peaking at $30,694 at some point. Earlier this year,
BlackRock and other asset managers had expressed interest in offering spot Bitcoin ETF services, which
may have pushed its value proposition. However, Bitcoin’s average daily trading volume dropped by
58.7% on a quarterly basis from $33.4 Billion it was in Q1 to $13.7 billion in Q2
Stablecoins shrank by 3.5%
The news was grim for some of the top-15 stablecoins. Fiat-backed stablecoin ecosystem’s market cap
fell 3.5% to about $4.6 billion. Circle’s USDC and Binance USD (BUSD) lost $5.18 billion and $3.44
billion respectively. Tether’s USDT added 4.4% to its market cap, increasing its stablecoin market share
to 66%. True USD (TUSD) added 50% ($1.02 billion) added to its market cap. Gemini’s USD (GUSD),
FlexUSD (FUSD) and Praxos (USDP) went up by 44.4%, 34.4% and 30% respectively.
EHT staking grew by 30.3%
Total staked EHT grew by 30.3% in Q2 to reach 23.6 million, which represented a gain of 5.6 million. Of
all the staked ETH, Lido was the dominant staking provider at 31.9% of all the staked ETH, a slight
improvement from 31.4% in Q1. Kraken’s dominance fell to 3.4%. Coinbase’s dominance also fell by
3.45%, leading to a 9.7% market share.
NFT Trading Volumes dropped
Digital collectables or Non-fungible tokens (NFT) trading volume was at $3.15 billion, compared to $4.84
billion in Q1. This represented a decline of 35%. Ethereum captured 83.0 % of the trading volume. In
March, Bitcoin Ordinals increased in popularity accounting for 20.3% of the NFT trading volume that
month. This incident slightly depressed the NFT trading volumes on Ethereum that month by 9.7%. But it
bounced back.
Of all the different blockchain networks, Solana had the worst decline of 78.6% from 184.91 million in Q1
to $39.66 million in Q2. This may be attributed to the migration of major Solana collections to Ethereum
and Polygon.
Binance’s market share dropped to 52 %.
According to data from CoinGecko, spot trading volume across the top 10 centralized crypto exchanges
(CEX) totalled $1.42 trillion for Q2, this was a decrease of 43.2% compared to Q1.
Binance has seen its dominance slide from 61% in March 2023 to 52% in June 2023. This could be
attributed to legal problems it has had with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC).
Spot Trading volume on decentralised exchanges fell 28.1 %
Total spot trading from the top 10 decentralised exchanges (DEX) totalled $155 billion in 2023 Q2, which
represented a 30.8% drop from Q1.
